Noisey meets Tristan Shone, the mechanical engineer behind Author & Punisher to learn more about how he makes his unique music.
Ed Sheeran’s x Spends Its 200th Week On The Billboard Album Charts
Ed Sheeran’s x spends its 200th week on the Billboard Album Chart, thanks to “Sing”, “Don’t”, “Thinking Out Loud”, “Bloodstream”, and “Photograph”. In December 2014, Spotify named x the most-streamed album in the world for 2014, racking up more than 430 million streams for the year. x has been certified 10× Platinum in the UK with sales of over 3 million copies, making it the third best-selling album of the 2010s and one of the best selling albums in the history of the UK. The album has been certified 3× Platinum in Canada, 6× Platinum in New Zealand, and 4× Platinum in the US, with sales of over 4 million copies. It also became the first album ever to be certified Diamond in Australia. Also, x broke Adele’s record for the longest charting Top 10 album in the history of the United Kingdom. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, x sold 4.4 million copies in 2014 and 3.5 million copies in 2015, becoming the third and second best-selling album, respectively, and now the album has sold 10 million copies worldwide.
Who says you have to be young to hit the top of the Urban/AC charts in the US? Not David Bray!
Who says you have to be young to hit the top of the Urban/AC charts in the US? David Bray has the edge and experience of songwriting to hit #1 on Buffalo’s WUFO FM with his “Crowded Isolation.”
From his early work with producers Daniel Lanois, Eugene Martynec and John Capek to his more recent work with a list of all star musicians including Motown’s legendary bassist Bob Babbitt, Garth Hudson of the Band, Colin Linden, Kim Mitchell, Jeff Healey, Daniel Lanois, Bill King, Richard Bell, Gary Craig, Paul Reddick, Justin Abedin of Jacksoul, John Dymond and more, David has emerged as one of Canada’s most distinctive songwriters. His compelling lyrical flare combined with an ear for musical hooks has been hailed by critics and industry veterans alike. Bray is a poet and storyteller as much as he is a writer of songs….all without compromising on his superb brand of R&B which is the bedrock of his latest collection.
A decade of work has resulted in a trilogy of three separate releases (of which Crowded Isolation is the second) ranging musically from contemporary R&B to Soul and Blues, focusing on a soul-searching examination of what Bray calls “Crowded Isolation” and the challenges of urban life.
Bray wrote, produced and performed the latest album helped out by all star musicians and some fine vocalists, most notably his musical partner Lorraine Reid, one of Canada’s finest new vocalists. Crowded Isolation has been drawing raves from over 100 stations around the world so far.
Watch Prince Rehearse The Revolution For “Nothing Compares 2 U” Back In 1984
Unseen rehearsal footage of Prince & The Revolution from the summer of 1984, and Prince’s original studio version of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’
What’s Happening With Toronto’s El Mocambo? Eddie Kramer Explains…
Bill King: The El Mocambo? Everyone wants to know what’s going on!
Eddie Kramer: I so remember being there in 1977 recording The Stones.
The place was purchased, and I was asked to come up and have a look and see whether I wanted to get involved. I looked at it and I said OK, I’m going to do this, we’re going to put a studio in here. I wanted to bring in John Storyk, my oldest and dearest friend. He and I did Electric Lady for Jimi, OK. And that’s the reason. WSD Group, which is the architectural firm, is probably one of the largest ones in the world and one of the better ones. It’s almost there.
We’ve taken about two and a half years so far and basically destroyed the entire building and took it down below grade and built a brand-new building on the inside. All we kept was the facade and the side walls and we underpinned the entire interior. There are now two venues. One on top of the other.
You remember the old El Mocambo? It had about a ten-foot ceiling. It’s now twenty-six and a half feet high with a balcony running around top side and it’s going to be the preeminent and predominant facility in North America. They are soundproof rooms. Both are completely isolated so that I can record the two venues at the same time with live streaming.
I have a special room on the third floor looking down on the room. This is like Abbey Road. We have the same board, a beautiful Neve vintage board looking down at the stage and five 4K cameras and Go Pro’s – the whole thing and live streaming 24/7.
Steven Wilson on Changing Your Direction In Music
When it came to developing the overall sound of To the Bone, was part of it that you didn’t want to do a third consecutive conceptual album, or at least not one with a very clear concept running through it?
Stephen Wilson: I think I can simplify it and just say I wanted to do something different. And that’s really been the driving force for me throughout my whole career: “OK, I’ve done that, now what can I do that will be different, and that will keep me engaged and keep me excited?” Because it’s very boring to just keep repeating yourself. At least, it seems to me that’s very boring. I know there are some artists that have kind of made a virtue of repeating a similar approach every time. And that’s fine. But my approach has always been: “OK, I’ve done that, what can I do next?”
And these things are often influenced by outside factors, like what am I listening to, what movies am I watching, what’s interesting me in the news and the media, what’s happening in my life, what’s happening in the lives of my friends and my family. And particularly the kind of music I was listening to, I suppose, was quite a long way away from that so-called progressive-rock genre that people associated me with. I was listening to a lot of pop. I was listening to a lot of ’80s pop, the kind of pop music I grew up with — Kate Bush, Tears for Fears, Talk Talk, Depeche Mode, Prince. When Prince and Bowie died, like a lot of people I ended up going back and listening to a lot of their back catalogue. And all of those things conspire to take you in a particular direction when you start writing your own music, and I’m sure that’s a lot of the reason for the direction changing.
So it wasn’t a self-conscious thing to say, “OK, I’m going to make more of a mainstream pop record,” or “OK, I’m going to upset the people who have decided I’m a progressive-rock artist.” It was simply a challenge to myself: let’s do something different, and maybe this time around let’s strip away some of that conceptual element and let’s just focus on great melodies and a more direct approach to songwriting.
Gina Arnold gets it right on Pussy Riot
“When members of Pussy Riot were arrested in 2012 in Moscow for performing a crude anti-Putin punk song atop an altar in a Russian orthodox church, the overblown reaction of their government seemed positively quaint. Six years on, after Russian interference in the U.S. election, Pussy Riot’s concerns have become ours. It’s now impossible not to feel politically energized by the sound of the Russian language, particularly when caught shouting feminist slogans over poppy EDM in front of fun video art depicting police brutality and political corruption. At the very least, the sight of Nadya Tolokonnikova in a neon-pink ski mask yelling, ‘Pussy is the new dick’ to a bunch of bouncy hipsters is a reminder that we in America are still at liberty to goof on this stuff. But one wonders for how long.”
– Gina Arnold writes in on Pussy Riot at the Rickshaw Stop (San Francisco, March 28)
David Blaine Sews His Mouth Shut in Insane Trick
Priyanka Chopra uses Jimmy Fallon’s iPhone to film David Blaine’s intense mouth sewing magic trick but gets so freaked out that she drops the phone, turning the footage into The Blaine Witch Project.
SNL’s Kate McKinnon and Beth Kobliner talk money with kids
For Financial Literacy Month, SNL’s Kate McKinnon shows why it’s so important that parents talk money with kids. Beyond the laughs (and there are plenty) lies an important message: We need to teach out children money basics early—no joke.
Avengers: Infinity War Cast Sings The Brady Bunch Parody Theme “The Marvel Bunch”
The cast of Avengers: Infinity War sing their own version of “The Brady Bunch” theme song, “The Marvel Bunch.”